One can count on Opera Lafayette to choose lesser-known but worthwhile music and to perform it beautifully. This was true Monday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, when it performed an assortment of French and Italian music for solos and duets, featuring two of the ensemble’s favorite guest singers.

Soprano Gaële Le Roi and tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt were sympathetically matched in the duets, such as the lovely “Qu’il sait peu son malheur” from Lully’s “Atys,” two never-overbearing voices that blended with and supported each other.

Fouchécourt was at his best in the comic solos, camping it up in the cross-dressed role of the old nurse Berenice, in excerpts from Cavalli’s “Ipermestra,” an opera rediscovered at the Utrecht Early Music Festival in 2006. Le Roi, who is a formidable singing actress, excelled in the dramatic recitatives for Galatea, bewailing the death of Acis in “La Galatea” by Loreto Vittori. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Cavalli, Ipermestra (performed at the Utrecht Early Music Festival in 2006) [Part 1 | Part 2]